How to Engage and Retain Club Members
You have gathered people who share or at least purport to share the same interests as you, granted. You have already done all the paperwork and registered your club. You have a group of energetic, passionate people as the leaders of your club. But still, beyond the info session day when you had 100 attendees, only a few people trickle to your meetings and even those who trickle aren’t consistent in their trickling.
Retaining motivated members in a club is a hard job. Doing so at ALU is harder as ALU students are very ‘busy’ with many exciting activities calling for their attention. Made worse by the fact that most of your membership will be Computer Science Students who are perceived to be the busiest on campus.
Here is how you can retain and engage your members(And, if you are a member, contribute to the growth of your club)
1. Ask why your members joined the club
It is not enough to ask this question during your first meeting. Always refer back to the responses your members gave you. Continuously ask if the club is meeting their expectations. This will help you know if you are delivering to their needs or have veered off the course. Asking in itself is a way of making people feel important, visible and taken care of.
2. Involve members in the club activities
It is not uncommon to have members with varying skills level and expertise. Even for those who are beginners, involve them as much as you can by teaming them with experienced members on a project. Also, do not ignore the experienced ones, give them the tasks of teaching others or find other projects that challenge them so that the club can be worth their time.
3. Assign members to mentors
Pair members with very committed members of the club to check up, guide and motivate them to participate in club activities.
4. Diversify your activities as much as you can
Change your venue, change your style of delivery, change facilitators and involve more fun activities like games. Everybody gets excited and learns differently, so the more you diversify, the more inclusive you become.
5. Feedback Feedback Feedback
Take advantage of every opportunity you have to get feedback. After every event, before rolling out a new project, during the lifecycle of a project and at random interactions. Go ahead and implement the feedback and repeat.
6. Involve everyone in your celebrations
Even if they are very tiny achievements let everyone know about it and thank them for contributing to it. Let them own the achievement. Foster the “we are in this together” attitude to make your members feel involved.
7. Conduct exit interviews with members who have left
An exit interview enables to get more accurate data on why somebody left as you can observe their body language and emotions as they state their reasons. If many point to one common issue, then you should urgently address it. Sometimes members leave because of things beyond your control and an exit interview will enlighten you on that so you don’t have to beat yourself up.
8. Identify members who aren’t active
But don’t stop there. Talk to them to find out why they don’t attend meetings and see how you can address their issues. This requires you to have a very keen eye or strong monitoring and evaluation system. You should define clearly what triggers indicate that members are unengaged eg a member who:
- hasn’t attended the last 3 events
- does not respond to action emails
- does not read emails
- does not complete assignments or tasks
9. Create a robust reward system
Research has proven that people learn best when there is a reward. Your reward doesn’t have to be expensive or grandiose. Some rewards such as certificates, being featured in your clubs social media or publication, representing a club during conferences etc can really motivate people to be active.
These aren’t the only ways you could use to engage your members, there are tons of other ways online. Linked below are some resources you could use. Keep in mind the key thing is to really understand your membership and attend to their needs. Be flexible enough to adjust to new needs and always maintain high standards in all your events. If, for example, your learning sessions are poor quality, you are chasing away members on your own.
If you disagree or have additions, please comment on the response section below and let’s improve our clubs together!
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